Event · M41

Nimbosa Crusade

The Nimbosa Crusade was fought on and above the world of Nimbosa, not on Terra. One account dates the destruction of the Vostroyan Firstborn IX and the fall of Nimbosa to the T’au to 790.M41; later accounts date Commander Brightsword’s capture of Nimbosa to 993.M41 and place the destruction of the Vostroyan Firstborn IX at the Battle for Polia. Helbrecht is named only in the 993.M41 account. In that account an Imperial force, including Imperial Guard, Orpheus Taelos and the Imperial Fists 2nd Company, and High Marshal Helbrecht with his Black Templars, tried to retake Nimbosa and was destroyed at the Koloth Gorge Massacre. Imperial Fists were killed there and Taelos was badly wounded. Helbrecht survived. Later in 993.M41 the Nimbosa Crusade itself was launched. Black Templars, Imperial Fists and other Space Marine chapters returned. The first battles were in space, on T’au orbitals locked above Nimbosa. The strike cruiser Dorn’s Wrath closed on the station Orbital Primus, and Castellan Folker’s household boarded it. Fire Warriors met them with ambushes in the corridors. The Templars divided into small squads, broke through bulkheads, and took the gunnery controls, then turned that station’s guns on the other orbitals. Attacks by the Imperial Navy brought the remaining stations down. Six months after that war began, the crusade ended with the recapture of Nimbosa and the destruction of the T’au garrison. A Chapter keep was then raised in the Hebrak Mountains. Helbrecht, on Nimbosa, ordered his warriors to march from that keep and pursue the retreating T’au. Castellan Folker also sent Brother Lodhuvicus to the ruins of Polia, where the dead Imperial Guard still lay with their weapons, and no T’au force remained. Helbrecht is not recorded on that reconnaissance. The recapture is the recorded end of this crusade. Nimbosa afterwards continued to change hands and remained contested.

See where Nimbosa Crusade occurred on the galactic map in the 41st Millennium.

Open in universe